Google Faces Renewed Protests and Criticism Over China Search Project (theintercept.com) 81
On Friday, a coalition of Chinese, Tibetan, Uighur, and human rights groups organized demonstrations outside Google's offices in the U.S., U.K., Canada, India, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Sweden, Switzerland, and Denmark, protesting the company's plan to launch a censored version of its search engine in China. The Intercept reports: Google designed the Chinese search engine, code-named Dragonfly, to blacklist information about human rights, democracy, religion, and peaceful protest, in accordance with strict rules on censorship in China that are enforced by the country's authoritarian Communist Party government. In December, The Intercept revealed that an internal dispute had forced Google to shut down a data analysis system that it was using to develop the search engine. This had "effectively ended" the project, sources said, because the company's engineers no longer had the tools they needed to build it.
But Google bosses have not publicly stated that they will cease development of Dragonfly. And the company's CEO Sundar Pichai has refused to rule out potentially launching the search engine some time in the future, though he has insisted that there are no current plans to do so. The organizers of Friday's protests -- which were timed to coincide with Internet Freedom Day -- said that they would continue to demonstrate "until Google executives confirm that Project Dragonfly has been canceled, once and for all." Google "should be connecting the world through the sharing of information, not facilitating human rights abuses by a repressive government determined to crush all forms of peaceful online dissent," said Gloria Montgomery, director at Tibet Society UK. "Google's directors must urgently take heed of calls from employees and tens of thousands of global citizens demanding that they immediately halt project Dragonfly. If they don't, Google risks irreversible damage to its reputation."
But Google bosses have not publicly stated that they will cease development of Dragonfly. And the company's CEO Sundar Pichai has refused to rule out potentially launching the search engine some time in the future, though he has insisted that there are no current plans to do so. The organizers of Friday's protests -- which were timed to coincide with Internet Freedom Day -- said that they would continue to demonstrate "until Google executives confirm that Project Dragonfly has been canceled, once and for all." Google "should be connecting the world through the sharing of information, not facilitating human rights abuses by a repressive government determined to crush all forms of peaceful online dissent," said Gloria Montgomery, director at Tibet Society UK. "Google's directors must urgently take heed of calls from employees and tens of thousands of global citizens demanding that they immediately halt project Dragonfly. If they don't, Google risks irreversible damage to its reputation."
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The first is Microsoft, who has stifled and destroyed the computer industry since the very beginning and has now conned millions into using a spyware/crippleware marketing platform as an OS.
And the only problem with Wikileaks is Julian being a pretentious, entitled douchebag.
Censorship (Score:2)
People want to be able to find the history of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
To LOL at a cartoon of a political active bear.
To look up topics like 1984, term limits.
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Let me guess. You're a beta tester for Dragonfly and you found NOTHING, NOTHING AT ALL, about the Tienanmen Square Massacre when you searched.
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I don't think they give a fuck about that, I can assure you that they just want to watch porn, play violent video games and watch mindless reality shows like the rest of the world.
The problem with monopoly (Score:2)
It is a problem when you can't boycott the "do no evil" company because there is no competition.
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I do my best. I will not use Chrome, or Google Search, or anything else Google if I can possibly help it. Of course, half the web sites out there have Google Ads and analytics and whatnot. But the web is just about over anyway. Tragedy of the commons.
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Of course, half the web sites out there have Google Ads and analytics and whatnot.
It helps running noscript. I have google analytics and a bunch of others blacklisted.
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It is a problem when you can't boycott the "do no evil" company because there is no competition.
There is Baidu [baidu.com].
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What the fuckity fuck, we spent years, centuries, millenia without them. They are fucking nothing, only our work makes them something. DuckDuckGo is already a better search engine, and email services are a dime a dozen, neither here nor there. Alternate video catalogues are growing and google social media just rolled over and died. They are fuck all, just their brand of marketing, their marketing delusions, jammed in your face all day everyday. Google spend more time marketing themselves than they do anythi
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"What the fuckity fuck, we spent years, centuries, millenia without them. They are fucking nothing,"
No, the web was fucking nothing before search engines. It was a research toy. Before Hotbot it was all but useless. And Hotbot didn't scale, nor altavista. So now we have Google.
"DuckDuckGo is already a better search engine,"
And just like that, you lost all credibility. Go on, pull the other one. DDG is absolutely useless. In the dozen times I've tried it, it has delivered useful results zero times. Google ha
The Great Wall (Score:2, Interesting)
Meanwhile, Apple has the equivalent of a Social Score (they track calls and emails), removed all apps that bypass censorship in China while also granting China full control of iCloud Data (including daily Face Shots and GPS)... this is just for starters.
They do have colorful ads that keep telling us how much they value privacy while they purposely track, data-mine, data-horde and report on every single user of their ecosystem. They have become China's Great (digital) Wall. The MSM... silent.
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Because it's not competition. It's the same Chinese gov't hand up both puppet's asses.
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Why do all the countries and non-Chinese seem to want a say in what services Chinese people get access to?
Because the "Chinese Model" of authoritarian state capitalism is the biggest challenge to Western liberal democracy. It is an enticing model to the leaders of many developing countries who want prosperity without freedom.
It isn't just about China, it is about the future of humanity.
Why is not having Google there to provide info better than having them there?
It isn't. Google should stay in China. It is better them to be there and be engaged. The idealism of the protesters is misdirected.
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Why is not having Google there to provide info better than having them there?
It isn't. Google should stay in China. It is better them to be there and be engaged.
If Google were a humanitarian organization, you'd be absolutely correct. But Google is a corporation whose entire reason for existence is collecting information about people, and making money with it. They also seem to be very good at that. If they stay in China, they will only help make China better at that, except China doesn't just want to make money with it. They want to target people for abuse. By staying, Google will only be assisting with abuse. It will not make the world a better place. It will in f
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China stated that material wealth had to come first
The government of China never said any such thing. They have never declared an intention to democratize, regardless of how prosperous they become.
They're not a democracy (Score:5, Informative)
Thing is the world's turned a blind eye to China abusing it's people for the sake of cheap consumer goods since Nixon. Not sure why we care now.
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Not sure why we care now.
Because the west generally believed that economic liberalization would lead to political liberalization as a function of a rising middle-class that would eventually demand more social freedom and would have the clout to make it happen. And maybe that was true. Maybe it still is true, but its definitely taking longer than most western leaders hoped (under Xi Jinping they have begun backsliding) and China's embrace of AI (authoritarian intelligence?) seems to be the oligarchy's attempt to prevent it.
One th
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Opening up China was always about cheap labor (Score:2)
Google (Score:3)
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Can you imagine a task so great, the resources needed, and its created for free and given on gratis.
Well they're not the first nor the last to be ruined by $$. Also if people didn't want such services they ( google, facebook, Apple) would have died already.
Technological determinism was never a critical factor when paired against human behavior.
Long live the surf!
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Uhhhh, name one company that was not "ruined" by money.
Apple. They got ruined by the death of Jobs, not by money.
Facebook hasn't been ruined by money yet. They're still the same clunky software that people love, they haven't lost focus of their original product (and never stopped abusing users' privacy, either).
Oracle has also kept their original focus.
The main point is that Google has clearly changed their focus, and for consumers it's not in a good way. The secondary point was a diagnosis of why: because they found more money elsewhere.
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Facebook hasn't been ruined by money yet.
lolwut? They were ruined by money from the start. You can't spoil something that is already rotten.
Apple. They got ruined by the death of Jobs, not by money.
Ehh, its easy to point at the death of jobs because its was such a soap opera. But I'd like to see some actual metric to back that up. Otherwise it just sounds like availability bias.
And FWIW, one thing Donald Jesus Trump has taught me is that Jobs was also a sociopath with narcissistic personality disorder. Jobs's "reality distortion field" was just a PR euphemism for gaslighting. And the way he denied
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And FWIW, one thing Donald Jesus Trump has taught me is that Jobs was also a sociopath with narcissistic personality disorder.
And Dunning–Kruger makes you believe you have the ability to diagnose psychological disorders?
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Don't let the GP bother you - cultural support for high priests in a Science orthodoxy is rapidly waning. Degrees are starting to head towards obscurity.
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The combination of dealing with two NPDs in among my in-laws (sister-in-law and niece's ex-husband)
Were they evaluated by a psychologist and diagnosed with DPD, or is that just something you deduced yourself?
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That's too bad.
Re: Google (Score:2)
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"Apple. They got ruined by the death of Jobs, not by money."
Nope. They took Jobs back due to love of money. They could have had BeOS and a CEO who would still be alive, but they went with Steve and NeXTStep instead, and now you're holding it wrong.
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Oh, sure, it's the money, not doing a deal with the NSA and bringing on a CFR functionary as CEO. Must be the money that turned Google sociopathic.
What do Chinese people want? (Score:1)
I still haven't found any article that talks about what most Chinese people want. All of these groups are speaking for them.
Would you prefer a restricted Google or none at all?
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"All of these groups are speaking for them"
They are speaking for them because protesting within China is not allowed. The only protests the Chinese government allows are those aimed at Japan.
Re:What do all humans want. (Score:1)
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Meh. Give most people a microphone and they'll complain no matter how good their life is.